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Making Decisions

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The most important decision that we have to make is entrusting someone with a job. Whether this someone that you want to entrust with a job is you or somebody else, whether your are making the decision or giving advice to the decisions maker, you are probably wondering: what are the factors to take into account before deciding that someone is a good fit? A Job Analysis Framework Convenient for making faster decision while evaluating candidates for a position. What you can see in the table below is a framework for making a job analysis. It's a visual representation that helps see the actions that a role can make to deliver something. Someone fits in the role if they developed the good quality for the role, they develop this good quality by following the true doctrine. The deliverable they produce can either have a right or wrong attribute. Active countermeasures prevent the wrong attribute from being enabled and the passive countermeasure

Saving Attention

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It turns out that as much as you can pay with your attention, you can also save with it. Many people seem to think that time is a ressource, but is it, really? I have reasons to believe that time isn't a ressource. I think that you can't really allocate time, you can only pass through it. While passing through time what you really allocate is your attention. You PAY attention; and you only have so much of it. So how can we spend our attention more thoughtfully? How can we estimate the worth of the things that we spend our attention on? Is there any way that we can measure this kind of returns on investment? I have reasons to believe that yes, some things are more worthy of our attention that other things. Some things have better returns on investment than other things. Stop signs are worthy of our attention When some people are making a phone call, while driving a car on the highway, they probably don't measure the potential impact that this kind of attention spending can h

Paying Upfront

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Turns out people shouldn't do any work for free. On the importance of getting paid upfront. Money is cheap. There's plenty of it out there and its value keeps falling if it isn't put to use. Our attention on the other hand is one of the scarcest of our assets. Why would anyone ever accept to work for free? Because they didn't put their most valuable of their assets, their attention, into the most valuable of its use. They didn't set the correct expectations. They anticipated and they procrastinated, they never set the expectations in the present. Any money if it isn't put into somebody's work it is a worthless piece of paper. What is of value is what money represents. It represents expectations. The expectations that today (and maybe  tomorrow too, but that is not as certain as today) they will be able to exchange it for some value, to get another asset or to reinforce the benefits provided by an existing one. That's why peo

Setting Milestones

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Astronaut standing beside an american flag on the moon Turns out putting man on the moon should not have been presented as a goal. It should have been presented as a milestone. On The proper usage of goals and milestones Goals should only be used to pass through milestones and push the limits further. Goals shouldn't be the end game. If you confuse goals and milestones, you will be disappointed. If you present moon-walking like a goal instead of a milestone, when people will have reached the moon, nobody will feel the need to go to Mars. The Milestones should be defined by the expected outcomes. The Goals should be to build the tools that help the project reach and pass through the milestones.

Tying Lifelines

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Turns out Consumer Ready Artificial intelligence should not have been presented as just right around the corner. On the importance of assuming that achieving a creative task will take 10 times more time than originally expected. People sometimes present The AI Winter as caused by the over hype of the potential of artificial intelligence. Today we know that the potential of AI wasn't over hyped. Artificial Intelligence is the fastest growing industry in the world right now and it delivers tremendous results, all other industries are impacted. Salvador DalĂ­. (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm). What caused the AI winter were the poorly set expectations of how much time it will take to reach customer ready artificial intelligence. Preventing those troubles comes down to accepting the fact that someone on your team, or in your industry - maybe you, maybe somebody else - will fall into the planning fallacy .

Choosing Difficulty

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Turns out people shouldn't take shortcuts. On the importance of choosing to do things not because they are easy but because they are hard What is it that people value? Money? Health, Status? All those things are temporary. What about their soul? Souls are everlasting. Everybody dies eventually, nobody knows exactly when but it's gonna happen. When you will die and you don't know when : In what kind of state would you like to have your soul ? Remember then once that you're dead, you can't change your soul, you will have to deal with it for eternity. The opposite of  choosing to do things not because they are easy but because they are hard  is equivalent to making a  deal with the devil . The most important of our assets is our soul and when we make a deal with the devil, we tarnish our soul and put ourselves at risk of eternal damnation. When people are confronted with a choice, they should chose the hard one.

Fighting Ignorance

Turns Out You shouldn't try to change people's mind when they fail to recognize their failures. On the importance of pushing people to the limit. People who refuse to acknowledge and recognize their failures are doomed because their way of life is unsustainable. You cannot change their mind because radicalization makes people blind to alternatives. What can be done instead : Containment Quarantine them. Very important, this cannot fail, their illness must not spread. Make it a safe space Let them develop their ideas. Fight fire with fire Once they are properly contained, push them to the edge, tell them they are not radical enough. For example :  When they say that the moon landing didn't happen, tell them that the moon isn't real. When they tell you that the moon isn't real, tell them that space isn't real. When they tell you that the space isn't real, tell them that time isn't real. etc. Make it larger and larger, they

Finding Missions

On the importance of knowing The Difference between a Mission and a Goal A mission is something that you want to continue to do. A goal is something that you want to achieve.

Predicting Outcomes

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Turns out amateurs don't become professionals the day they get paid. On the importance of consistency in accuracy. Professionals are often portrayed as being paid amateurs but my take on this is that getting payed is only a symptom of being a professional. If getting payed is only a symptom then what causes someone to be a professional? A professional is capable of consistently predicting the outcomes of his actions. An amateur is capable of consistently surprising everyone, including himself. It's not sure whether it will be a good outcome, or whether it will be a bad outcome, one thing is sure it's that it's not clear what the outcome will be. Professional's bullseye Amateur's bullseye

Designing Frustration

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Turns out People who value their time shouldn't buy an electric car. On the importance of the Economics of the User experience It takes less than 5 minutes to refill the tank of a petrol car. It takes more than 2 hours to charge an electric car with superchargers. A gallon of petrol is about a hundred dollars.  If two hours of your time are worth more than a hundred bucks you probably shouldn't buy an electric car. Queue line of people in electric cars waiting to have access to superchargers.

Learning Effectively

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Turns Out People Shouldn't Try to Learn From Failure. On The Importance of Growing Success People often say that failure is the best teacher. But is it really true? A man slacklining above the void First, let's define a few things : Growing : It's when there's more of it and more of it and more if it ... Success : When you expect something and it happens Failure : When you expect something and it doesn't happen If you expected the car to crash after you launched it against the other car at full speed, you did not fail, you succeeded to predict the outcome of your actions. The problem with people who think that they can learn from failure is that they will not pay enough attention to their successes and try to learn from failure and then fail to learn. The only way someone can learn is from success. There is no other way to succeed than to try something often and repeatedly and see if it meets our expectations every time. The greater amoun

Expecting Rejection

Turns out people shouldn't feel too bad about rejection. On the importance of coping with the likelihood to get rejected and converting more prospects. Disclaimer : This blog post was inspired by the  video  How to Handle Rejection - Young Hustlers from the Grant Cardone Youtube Channel . Have you ever felt bad talking to a prospect? Very probably it was because you weren't expecting a rejection. Maybe you expected to get a good conversation with the prospect? Maybe not this time but the next time ? Maybe. What you should do : Expect to Get Rejected and Quantify the Likelihood of the Conversion. Selling something to someone isn't like tossing a coin, you won't succeed half of the time. That would be too easy... Most likely you should expect that among the 40 conversation per day that you will make, you will only get, 1 good conversation. What you should do, and I know it isn't very intuitive to do, you should celebrate those rejections because t

Distributing Attention

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Turns out people shouldn't neglect the intrinsic value of the present. On the importance of how we distribute our attention. All political ideologies are an expression of a policy with an attention distribution. The way attention is distributed tells a lot about ideology. Attention distribution curves Whereas Moderate (Conservatist) ideologies are focusing their attention on multiple layers of the present (Curve B), Primitive (Immobilist), and Radical (Progressivist) ideologies, focus their attention on the edges of the present (Curve A). Immobilism is about procrastination of expectations. Conservatism is about prediction of expectations. Progressivism is about anticipation of expectations. Immobilist and Progressivist ideologies are complementary. Political ideologies and their respective policies. All political ideologies are an expression of a policy. Whether the policy is about spread, diversity or dependency of attention, whether it is generalisat

Growing Engagement

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